


And I've Seen Flowers Die

by spacegaysgettingspacelaid



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Humor, Immortality, Keith and Shiro are Adoptive Siblings, Keith/Lance (Voltron) Angst, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, lance just wants to buy a cute boy some goddamn flowers, shiro is a supportive brother, who knows nothing about the whole immortality deal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-15 00:46:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10547162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegaysgettingspacelaid/pseuds/spacegaysgettingspacelaid
Summary: “You can buy me all the goddamn flowers you want, Lance. I’ve seen flowers die.”☼☼☼Or, the one in which Keith is immortal and has tried too many times to kill himself. Nothing ever works. He meets Lance and things change - whether that's good or not is debatable.





	1. Shiro's Jawline Is the Reason Keith Feels Emotions

**Author's Note:**

> chapters will usually be longer than this, but i wanted to get this out here. en-juh-hoy ^.^

Keith is immortal.

He’s immortal and he’s _cranky_ about it. He’s lost a whole lot of loved ones, including but not limited to the entirety of his immediate (and most of his distant) family. He’s 786 and he’s tried 300 times to kill himself but he’s only tried _ten_ times to watch the Twilight movies, ‘cause he just can’t put himself through that kind of pain.

Keith has had enough instances of “my life flashed before my eyes” to make him immortal all over again (and it doesn’t really even take much, considering his life is so long). He’s napped on train tracks, snacked on castor beans, and hacked his lungs out in the wake of self-started fires too many times to count, and he’s lost so many weeks to hopeful unconsciousness that he can’t really be sure he’s as young as he thinks he is.

And yet, he has never been to space.

His new quote-on-quote _“family,”_ is fucking _obsessed_ with space, and he doubts that will ever _not_ piss him off. He remembers loving space as a child, when it was a far-away fantasy and not a fairly attainable dream, when he had nightmares of dying rather than nightmares of living. But then he grew up nearly eight times as much as a regular human tends to, and now he knows with heart-breaking certainty that space would do nothing but beat the world record in “things that get boring after years of immortality.”

But Shiro - that’s the name of Keith’s current “brother” - has a sort of charming homeliness to him, so Keith postpones his plans to tear off every stupid, overly realistic space poster on the dude’s bedroom walls. Shiro’s one of kind, one of a soon-to-be-regretted kind, because he crept his way into Keith’s heart before Keith had a chance to slam the door in his stupid hot face.

Keith isn’t sure it even would’ve mattered - he thinks Shiro could probably pick a lock with the edge of his goddamn jaw.

But but but blah blah blah excuse excuse excuse and no matter what Keith says, he knows he’s messed up this time. No matter the route, Shiro’s made it into the tiny slivers of “People Keith Loves” and “People Who Are Alive” that actually overlap, and now Keith has to deal with the consequences.

One of the less heart-breaking consequences is that Keith can’t manage to ignore Shiro without feeling guilty. And so here he is, on his most recent made-up birthday, slouching over a bowl of frozen yogurt and glaring at Shiro not _nearly_ hard enough to kill.

“And this is Lance! It’ll do you some good to meet some kids your age,” Shiro says, and Keith tunes in just so he can twitch his eye in annoyance.

“I’ve got _you,_ don’t I?” Keith asks brusquely, barely managing to garner the strength to lift his head off his hand.

“I’m a lot older than you,” Shiro says in his patented Dad voice, and Keith squints. “Sorry, Keith, but I don’t count.”

“But I do!” says Keith’s supposed “peer,” a lanky boy not much taller than Keith. He’s got eyes like the ocean, and they remind Keith of that time when he was 603 and he tried to drown himself. First in a swimming pool, second in a pond, fourth in the middle of the goddamn Pacific Ocean. Didn’t work. “I’m Lance!”

“I know,” Keith huffs, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. His frozen yogurt sits untouched on the worn table.

“Well,” splutters Lance, whose tan skin is basically overridden by how red his face currently is. “Well, you’re Keith!”

“Believe it or not, I know that, too,” Keith chuckles. If nothing else, the boy is amusing.

“… Good start,” Shiro sighs after a bout of glaring on Lance’s part. Suddenly, Keith feels the urge to laugh. He drowns it with his first bite of yogurt. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning around ten.”

Keith spits out the yogurt. He’s had better anyway. “What do you mean, tomorrow!?”

“You’re staying the night with Lance and two other friends,” Shiro explains, undeterred by Keith’s yogurt-dripping lips. (Lance, on the other hand, seems _utterly_ fascinated.) “One of them will be picking you guys up from here... Hopefully the one that’s actually old enough to drive,” Shiro says, glaring threateningly at Lance. Lance puts his hands up as if to silently defend his honor. “I’m sure you’ll be fine, Keith.”

“This is it,” Keith says, leaning back in his chair once more. “This is the day I actually die.”

He wishes he were telling the truth.


	2. Short People Are Closer to Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith meets Hunk and Pidge and gets to see the Terrible Three in action.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ayyyy so ive got a general idea of where this is going now! i wanted to get a lot more done this chapter but i also didnt want to keep you guys waiting too long, so here we are!
> 
> feel free to listen to jeremy shada and chloe peterson's cover of "lucky" while you readddd

“Soooo, Keith!”

The sound grates on the poor immortal’s ears. Lance might even be worse than Twilight. “What do you want, Lance.”

“Geez, you don’t have to be so  _ rude!  _ I’m just being friendly, man, geez.”

“Uh-huh. Good for you. When will your friends be here?”

“Playin’ hard to get, huh?” Lance asks, smirking as he leans back in his chair across the table from Keith. “Don’t worry. I’ll break through those walls of yours.”

“Seeing as I’ve had 786 years to build them, I don’t really think so.”

Lance’s thin eyebrows fly up into his hairline. “What?”

“Inside joke,” Keith lies, waving it off. He doesn’t really  _try _ anymore. “Your friends?”

“Oh, right! Yeah, they’ll probably be here soon,” Lance assures him, and then the bell above the frozen yogurt shop’s door chimes half a million times and Keith wishes more than ever that he could be dead.

“Hi, hello, I’m Hunk, I guess you’ve met Lance already? We came, like, as fast as we could-”

“Oh my god, you’re almost as short as me, what the hell?”

“Pidge,” this new person, ‘Hunk,’ groans. He runs a dark hand over a dark face with sunshine-filled eyes. “Be  _ nice!  _ We have to make a good impression.”

The small, angry child makes an odd rendition of a ‘pft’ sound the likes of which Keith, in all his years, has never once heard. “I’ll make  you  an impression,” the kid mumbles, and Keith raises an eyebrow in amusement.

“Nice to meet you, too..?” he tries, standing up from his chair.

“Oh, god, he’s taller than I thought,” the angry kid - Pidge, was it? - whispers. “I hate him already.”

“Oh, great,” Keith says, not-actually-all-that-sarcastically. “That’s great. Definitely nice to meet you, too.”

“She doesn’t mean that,” Hunk hurries to say, holding his hands up and waving them back and forth placatingly. “I mean, she definitely does, but like- She’ll get over it, you just have to give it a while, and maybe, uh, maybe slouch a bit? Uh-”

“You’re talking too fast and I haven’t gotten to say anything,” Lance suddenly whines, and Hunk rolls his eyes while Pidge crosses her arms. Keith feels compelled to run away, but he doesn’t for fear of trampling Pidge.

“I’m sorry, are you…” Keith glances from Pidge, to Hunk, to Lance, and back again. “Are you  _someone’s _ little sister?”

“Ex _ cuse you!?”  _ Pidge begins with all the fury of an incredibly short person, and Keith thinks he might  _ actually  _ die tonight. “I am  _ seventeen!  _ And how old are  you,  My Chemical Romance? I bet I’ll be taller than you when I’m your age!”

Keith imagines that, if she were to live to his age, she probably  _would _ be taller than him. He looks like he hasn’t aged a day past nineteen, after all. “The name’s Keith,” Keith says gruffly, rolling his eyes, and Lance’s jaw drops for unknown reasons.

“And she’s Pidge and he’s Hunk and I’m Lance and we’re leaving!” Lance barks, huffily pushing between Pidge and Keith and leading everyone towards the door.

“I have to throw away my bowl-” Keith protests as Lance grabs his wrist and tries to pull him away.

Lance groans, grabbing the foam bowl and throwing it in the general direction of the trashcan. “Have a good day, sir,” grits out the cashier.

“Sorry about that!” Hunk calls over his shoulder as he’s pushed through the doors, and the bell chimes right over Keith’s head.

“Shotgun!” Pidge screeches, and Keith has learned from years of awkward social interaction that trying to drive someone else’s car is Not Good. So he and Lance end up in the backseats, squished together due to Hunk’s messy backseats and also leaning apart from each other because Keith hates everyone.

“What are the plans?” Hunk asks as the car makes an odd stuttering noise. Pidge sticks her tongue out of her mouth and slides to the floor, where she then proceeds to poke around at the pedals while Hunk lifts his feet up onto his seat and Lance rambles away.

“Right, man, I’ve got this  _ all  _ planned out,” the tan boy says, grinning widely. “Seven o’ clock, we show Keith Pidge’s museum.” (”It’s not a museum, Lance!”) “Eight, we climb the Shiro Tree and talk and get to know each other. Nine o’ clock, we ruin our slowly growing friendships by playing monopoly. And at Ten, we rekindle the relationships by binging every single movie on Netflix!”

“Seen them all,” Keith grumbles, and Lance rolls his eyes.

Hunk bites his lip and pokes his fingers together nervously. “Okay, well, that’s all fine and good but-”

“Lance!” Pidge barks, poking her head up from in front of the seats. “Screwdriver!”

“Which one?” Lance asks, already turning around and standing on his knees in his seat while he reaches up into the back of the cramped car. Keith finds himself even more squished.

“Yours!” Pidge replies, disappearing into the floor again, and Keith  _now _ finds himself staring  _right at Lance’s ass _ as the lanky boy stretches up to the front seat, practically falling on top of the pencil-filled cupholders as he passes a blue-handled screwdriver to the little girl in the floor. “Thanks, man!” Pidge says, and Keith tries not to laugh at the flat behind in front of him.

“No problem,” Lance replies, smiling obliviously as he plops back down on his seat, effectively ruining Keith’s life.

“Okay, but Lance-”

“Bam!” Pidge shouts, jumping up into the passenger seat again. “Gadget restored!”

“Saving  so  much money,” Lance says, reaching up a hand to high-five her, and she twists around just to fake him out.

“Fine, you can just figure it out yourself,” Hunk huffs, trying again to start the car and this time succeeding. “So, Keith. You’re Shiro’s little brother, right?”

Ironically, “Yeah. Adopted.” Keith lets out a long, tired breath. Too much socialization already. “Look, can you give me some room, Lance?”

“Only if you pass me that folder-bag, Mullet-Boy,” Lance says, and Keith grudgingly reaches over the crap crowding the backseat to pick up a faded gray leather bag.

“Wait-” Keith’s eyes narrow as his hand subconsciously wanders up to play with the back of his hair. “What?”

“The mullet, dude.” Lance laughs, shaking his head as he takes the bag out of Keith’s hand.  _Is it not “in” anymore..? _ Keith wonders. Last time he checked, it definitely was. “Hey, Hunk, one or two?”

“Oh, no. Two?” Hunk tries, clenching his hands tightly around the steering wheel as the car races down the street.

“Lady Gaga! Good choice,” nods Lance, and Hunk sighs.

“Could’ve been a lot worse,” he mutters, relaxing his hands, and Pidge wrinkles her nose as she takes the CD from Lance and pops it into the car’s disk tray.

“Uh, anyways,” Hunk tries again, turning the volume down a  lot  of notches after the first ear-ringing note blares out. “Has he ever told you about us?”

“I didn’t get as much warning as I should have, that’s for sure,” Keith replies carefully, dodging away from Lance’s swinging arms as he sings along to the current track.

“'Born This Way.' Classic! Come on, mullet-head, sing with me!” Lance says, immediately bursting into song again. His voice sounds terrible, screeching out each note at a key that is neither right nor within his vocal range, and Keith winces and fights the urge to cover his ears.

“Uh, no. Have fun.”

Lance huffs, pausing to cross his arms and look at Keith. “Dude.” The Latino bites down on a slowly growing smile. “What, are you  _ scared?  _ Think I can sing better than you?”

Keith blows air out through his teeth. “Sorry, Lance, but I don’t think it’d be very hard to out-sing  _ you.” _

“That’s it, change of plans. We’re playing American Idol on the Xbox the  _ second  _ we get home. You’re going down, Keith!” Lance says, jabbing a finger at Keith’s chest despite the close quarters.

“Don’t do it,” Hunk whispers, looking back at them via the mirror over the dash.

“Hoe, don’t do it,” Pidge echoes, staring back at Keith, too.

“I can sing!” Keith insists, internally cursing himself when his voice cracks. He’s too old for this shit.

“No you can’t,” Pidge replies, shaking her head.

“Aw, don’t be so mean,” Lance says, and Keith looks over at him to see a shit-eating grin on his face. “At least let the poor mullet  _ try.” _

Pidge snorts. “Fine. I guess it’s up to you, Keith.”

Keith smells the trap from a mile away, but hell if he’s gonna back down from a challenge, especially from  _ this  _ loser. “I’m in. I hope you’re not too dependent on your ego, Lance.”

“Oh, I am,” Lance replies, shit-eating grin still in place, “but only because I can afford to be.”

Hunk sighs as he parks the car in front of a quaint little duplex at the end of a small culdesac. “All right, fine, can’t say we didn’t warn you, Keith. Hey, Lance, you got the keys?”

“Sure do, buddy-o,” the Latino replies, practically  _ spilling  _ out of the car. “Come on, mullet, we’re here.”

“You’re pretty quiet, huh?” Pidge asks, walking next to Keith as he tags along after the other two boys.

“Kill me,” Keith replies.

“Get used to it,” she snorts. “Shiro keeps asking us if we’re ‘getting lonely in that big old house,’ and I’ve got a  _ very  _ funny feeling.”

“Uh?”

She waves him off as they reach the door. “Never mind. You like pizza?”

“Uh, sure,” Keith says, shrugging slightly as Lance struggles with the door.

_ “Everyone  _ likes pizza,” Lance grunts out as he twists the key in every direction. “Stupid door. It’s definitely got something against me. Hunk..?”

“I’ll do it,” the big guy sighs, taking the key and doing pretty much the same thing Lance was doing. “Uh. Okay, why isn’t it-” He takes the key out of the lock and squints at is before throwing his head back in exasperation.  _ “Lance,”  _ he groans.

“Y-Yeah?”

“This is the key to Pidge’s lab.”

“Oh shit,” Lance whispers, and Pidge glares at him with a sort of righteous fury.

“Uh, I’ll just go knock on Allura’s door! Just- Just, okay, just don’t kill Lance yet, just-” Hunk gives up, clamps his mouth shut, and runs over to the other apartment in the duplex before furiously pounding on the door.

“Are we locked out?” Keith asks.

“No, we’re just chilling out here!” Lance says, rolling his eyes as he backs away from Pidge, and Keith tilts his head forward a little and narrows his eyes. “Oh my god, Keith, yes, we’re locked out.”

“I’m gonna punch you in the face,” Pidge says calmly.

“Oh god not again. Keith, buddy, you gotta help me, she’s  _ crazy-” _

“Ah,  _ Keith!”  _ A feminine voice filters through the air, and Pidge snaps to attention and smiles innocently while Lance makes kicked-puppy eyes at the confident woman striding out of the other apartment. “Shiro told me you’d be here tonight!”

“He didn’t tell _ me,”  _ Keith grumbles.

“You gotta help me,” squeaks Lance, and Allura glances at the key clenched tightly in Pidge’s fist and then puts a hand in front of her mouth to hide her laugh.

“I’m afraid I can’t help you, Lance,” she giggles. “But I can open the door for you all!”

“You are an  _actual _ blessing,” Hunk breathes, and Allura smiles and sticks a different key in the door. It swings open on the first try, and Allura takes her key back and steps aside to allow the others entrance.

“It’s my pleasure, Hunk. Have a good evening, you four.”

The terror begins.

“You’re off the hook for now, Lance. So, Keith…”

“Okay so, what kind of food do you like? Because I could probably whip something up for dinner if you don’t like pizza, I really like to cook-”

“Guys, guys, you’re crowdin’ the poor guy! Listen, Keith. Are you a homosexual?”

“God, ever heard of ‘subtlety’? Anyways,  _ Keith.  _ I like to know the deepest, darkest secrets of everyone I know - for, uh, science, definitely science - so if you could maybe..?”

“Oh my god, we’re already scaring another friend away. Lance, you’re my best friend, man, but I  _ need  _ sane friends!”

“Psh, look who’s talkin’, big guy! Between you and me, Keith, I think he  _ cooked  _ our last new friend-”

“That was a  _ vegan  _ meal, Lance!”

“Why would a vegan meal taste like human flesh!?”

“Because it’s gross!”

“I think I have a headache,” Keith mumbles, nearly falling onto a nearby leather couch.

In all his 786 years on this Earth, he’s never met anyone as talkative as these three. Even Pidge, who seems to be in her thoughts much more than the other two, still manages to talk more than anyone Keith’s ever met before (excluding car salesmen). If there was ever a time for Keith’s brain to explode, it would be now.

“Socially inept,” Pidge sighs. “Not exactly a secret, but I guess it’s the best I can do right now.”

“Aw, come on, maybe he’s just an introvert!” Hunk says.

“No, just socially inept,” Keith confirms, leaning back against their couch which he so politely claimed.

“I’ll get American Idol set up,” says Lance as he practically sprints to the TV in front of the couch. “I’ll let you pick the song, since I’m so confident in my abilities.”

“Uh. What are the choices?”

“Oh god, here we go,” Hunk groans, and Lance launches into a five-minute explanation of every song on the list. Eventually, Pidge throws a floppy stuffed toy resembling a pig at Lance, who promptly drops his controller in shock and over-exaggerated pain. When the TV spits out several good luck phrases and then dives into the intro to some popular song from 2008, Lance doesn’t even skip a beat before jumping to his feet and tossing Keith a microphone.

“It’s a  _ duet,”  _ Lance says, smirking slightly. “I hope you’re ready to get owned!”

“I’m not,” Keith replies, smiling victoriously before Lance’s lyrics even float across the screen.

But when they do, Keith’s smile falls, his jaw dropping slightly in surprise. Lance’s actual singing voice is beautiful, confident and smooth and relaxed. Keith feels a pang in his chest, and it’s been so long since he last felt something like this that he actually can’t remember what it means.

Keith is so in awe of Lance’s voice that he doesn’t even notice when his part comes. When Lance stops singing, Keith just stops  _ breathing,  _ and it takes him a couple of spluttering seconds to realize he should be singing his part. Lance is clutching his stomach, he’s laughing so hard, and Pidge is snorting in amusement somewhere behind them while Hunk giggles in the kitchen.

_“Y-You make it easier when life gets hard,” _ Keith finally chokes out, and Lance freezes. He shakes his head and jumps back into the song so quickly that Keith thinks he must have imagined the pause.

Pidge has stopped laughing at this point and is simply staring back and and forth between the two boys in awe as they sing the chorus together. The rest of the song goes by pretty quickly, and then it ends and Keith and Lance just kind of  stare  at each other.

“So this is what passes for talent these days?” the video game version of Simon Cowell growls, and Lance snaps his head back around so he can glare at the TV.

Pidge chuckles. “Guess your plan doesn’t work as well when the victim can actually  _ sing,”  _ she says, and Lance pouts.

“How was I supposed to know the socially inept Mullet-Kid was a pop star in disguise!?” Lance complains, plopping down on the couch.

“If it helps at all,” Keith says, “you almost had me there. Definitely fooled me with the whole Lady Gaga thing.”

Lance smiles a little when he glances over at Keith, but then Hunk yells “Celebration pizza!” and Lance is vaulting over the couch so that he and Pidge are tripping over each other to get to the food first.

Keith is left to look on, to watch the three of them converge in the suddenly laughter-filled kitchen. He tells himself that these people are, if anything, a thorn in his side.

He’s never been a good liar, anyways.

 

  



End file.
